Sagebrush & Lace

Two runaway women in a man's world risk their very lives along the trails of the Old West to be together!

Samantha's heart belongs to the blonde Southern belle, Charlotte. But her father, the grasping textile tycoon McKinley Williams, is determined to plant her in the wedding bed of a man forty years her senior! And as the debutante of one of Chicago's wealthiest families in the 1870's, Samantha's supposed to be quiet, ladylike, and do what she's told.

In a world where the very word 'lesbian' is forbidden, Samantha makes a desperate bid for freedom. She proposes to her lover that they elope, stealing a pair of horses and trusting to their skills with buggy whip and trick shooting to see them through to San Francisco! Scared but swept away by her lover's passionate plea, Charlotte joins Samantha and they're off into the backroads of the Old West in 1876 America.

Adventure abounds as the two must elude Pinkerton detectives, local lawmen, and a vicious gang of bandits. Along the way, they're helped or hindered by whorehouse madams, famous journalists and infamous gunfighters as they make their way toward the Sierra Nevada Mountains. But with prairie snowstorms, hostile Native American tribes, and a pitched battle with Confederate cavalry leader Clarke Quantrill looming in their future, it's anyone's guess if they'll make it.

All Samantha and Charlotte can do is hone their skills, stick together, and fight for their love against all odds!

Included with this story are preview chapters of Sugar Lee Ryder's contemporary western romance, Cowgirl Up.

"This lesbian western will sneak up on you...will those remarkable people they encounter on the way west help them turn those skills into survival against not only hardship but a vicious bandit who fancies Charlotte?" -- Christopher Moss, the GLBT Bookshelf

"Ryder and Cutler tell a good story with a fine balance of exposition and dialogue....their story is full of adventure and entertaining characters." -- Lamba Literary Review: Celebrating Excellence in LGBT Literature since 1989